You Were Right!

"Infatuation is a state that precedes identification. Just as a person has no need of a name for his own sake (one 'knows' who one is), so the beloved needs no name. A name would limit her without reason, because she's simply too much for a single name. Ardor prefers sample pet words, try out sounds that are replaced the moment they fall short. Nothing is fixed, everything is possible. Each time you haven't looked for a while, she seems different. A person in love has so much to remember at once, it never works out. Looking again and again, touching again. Reading the face like a blind man, with your fingertips. Afraid to miss anything at all, to skip something, forget a thing." [fn]

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That first thing wasn't love, because I was there alone, and that was fine with him. The part about "preced[ing] identification" is amazing--it ran through me like an electric shock. How true! Is it any wonder that I don't call, even when I want to talk? I was trained to wait.

The other thing, though, is more than just infatuation. Mutuality, and a sense of permanence beyond the mystical wanting and hoping. I cannot deny the similarities, and of course the wretched overlap (not just in time but in space and in dreams, as well). But I can, and do, believe and know what's here now, and for the future, too. Fear, love, and trust.

But it's a very different form of fear.


"I liked you better foolish / I liked you better smaller."

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[fn] from Shadowchild by P. F. Thomése.